There’s some talk in the press lately about the Ontario government’s gambling machine, and someone who doesn’t gamble, not even on sports, was asking about the sucker bet. So I called up longtime friend and onetime Ottawa book Danny Savard for his quick take on the sucker bet. Sucker bet for Dummies:
“A sucker bet is just what it sounds like, it’s a bet that only a sucker would make, the kind a born loser is destined to chase. It’s a play that the minute it’s laid the poor schmuck doesn’t have a chance.
A parlay is the sucker of all sucker bets. I mean right off the mark you’re handicapping yourself. You have to win two or three plays, sometimes even more, to collect on one bet. You lose one of them and zilch nothing. The sucker says ‘but yeah look at the pay-out if you hit one of those parlays, it’s like 3 to 1 or 5 to 1′.
Truth is the sucker more times than not is taking the parlay because either they’re scared of the juice on a straight up play or they’re just f*cking greedy. Either way, scared or greedy equals sucker in my book.
